Time’s 100 most influential people: Anyone surprised anymore?

Pop culture seems so fast, so mobile, so darn everywhere, you have to wonder if the top of Time’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people can surprise anyone anymore.

Time says Lady Gaga is shocking the art world, Sarah Palin is leading a political movement and Steve Jobs is the talk of the tech town.

And I say, “Well, duh.”

Luckily, Time backs its top talker picks — which probably sell 95 percent of its issues — with a list of people many of us don’t know and should. People whose ride to greatness hasn’t included frequent flights on Google News, the Huffington Post and Facebook’s news feed.

It’s the pop culture paradox: To break a wave, you’ve got to ride it.

So though Sarah Palin’s face marks the magazine’s digital list of its most influential leaders, it’s Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva you read about first. And when you click on the video of Lady Gaga that footnotes her profile, you hear her speak not about herself, but about the man she says is her biggest influence — the thinker Deepak Chopra.

It’s a struggle for anyone trying to have a voice online: The more critical it is to ride the culture wave, the easier it is to forget to say something new.

So we see a rise in culture hacks, ways to cloak new, personal content as something at the peak of the culture wave.